


The End of Claustrophobia

by GretchenSinister



Series: GretchenSinister's First Blacksand Week [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, POV First Person, POV Pitch Black, essentially a love letter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23046673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Day 1: Trapped in a Closed Space
Relationships: Pitch Black/Sanderson Mansnoozie
Series: GretchenSinister's First Blacksand Week [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656247
Kudos: 3
Collections: Blacksand Short Fics





	The End of Claustrophobia

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 7/7/2013.

I don’t understand claustrophobia anymore. If there is a space smaller or more wonderful than the circle of your arms holding me, I do not know it. I can feel your heart beat against mine, never exactly in time. Do you find this syncopation as beautiful as I do? To me, it means that we are not the same, that we will never be the same. That’s how I want it. I don’t want you to be like me, and I don’t want you to want me to be like you. And you don’t. That’s what makes this little space so miraculous, so glorious, so safe. Because you don’t need the BEAT BEAT BEAT of two hearts that will never disagree. Like me, you’re glad to feel my heartbeats in the spaces between yours, sometimes just after, sometimes just before. Of course, every once in a while, your heart beats with mine exactly, the rhythms aligning for one brief instant. I smile when that happens, because it is, after all, only once in a while. Only once in a while and exactly enough.

I think one of those moments must have happened the first time you really held me close, while I still struggled—still claustrophobic then, I suppose. I’d do anything but let you hold me, only hold me. What if, once I calmed in the small fortress of your arms, I couldn’t find my way out again? What if you forgot that you put me there? I’d been forgotten by so many others before.

I was also afraid that even if I fit within your arms, I wouldn’t fit into the smaller space behind your sternum, in the chambers of your heart. And I knew that once within your arms, that was where I would try to go. That was where you would try to put me. And surely there was no room for me there, where I could rest, surrounded by your rushing pulse stronger and more soothing than the sea.

I was so foolish. I am thankful for that one moment of synchronization, because I believe that was what told you to hang on in that last struggle. It told you the truth, when I tried to lie with the rest of my body and my words. Fool, fool, fool, was I. How could I believe there was no room for me in your heart, when I had already welcomed you into mine? If I could find room for you in my cramped and blackened heart, then finding space for myself in your expansive one should have seemed natural and easy to me as it did to you.

Ah! There it is. Another synchronous beat. Not a word, barely a sound, and yet it says so much. We are dream-creatures, it says. We are dwellers of the night. And neither are all dreams sweet, nor nights dark.

Did you feel it too? I think you did, your smile in sleep slowly growing and fading like a night-blooming flower between dusk and dawn.

Oh Sandy, you did not mean to change me, but you have. Into closets and elevators and MRI machines I can now only carry the memory of your warm arms.

And the fear of losing them, which, perhaps, is even stronger and more irrational than the claustrophobia ever was.

Thank you, my star.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> arc03verdigris reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
> god i love this….you’re one hell of a writer!
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: So many feels, so early in the morning. <3


End file.
